Date: Wed, 25 Jun 1997 19:14:21 -0700
From: Bob Spark <bspark at pacbell.net>
Subject: Ozzie Digest: L Frank Baum Quotation
While doing some advance reading of _The Road To OZ_, I came across
a quote on my page 184 that might be appropriate to one of our recent
ongoing discussions. I would like to print it here with the sincere
hope that no one will become offended by certain terms:
> Polly advanced rather shyly.
> "You have some queer friends, Dorothy," she said.
> "The queerness does n't matter, so long as they 're
> friends," was the answer.
--
"I love criticism just so long as it's unqualified praise."
Noel Coward

Date: Fri, 11 Jul 1997 09:58:47 -0600 (CST)
From: Ruth Berman <berma005 at maroon.tc.umn.edu>
Subject: ozzy digest
"The Road to Oz": I've been trying to remember what I thought of it
before reading "Who's Who in Oz," but I can't separate it out. Perhaps I
guessed, even before I knew from Snow, that the closing chapters were
bringing in people from other stories. Even without having read the other
stories (it took me some years of haunting used bookstores to track
down copies), I was delighted by the idea of the-world-of-Oz, with Baum's
awareness of a continent-sized geography and interactions of many
unusual countries.
Ruth Berman

Date: Mon, 14 Jul 1997 18:56:55 +0000
From: David Hulan <davidhulan at ntsource.com>
Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 07-12 & 14-97
7/12:
Ruth:
I can't remember details of what I thought of _Road_ as a child, but I
know that my memories of it were much fonder before I finally acquired a
copy in the mid-'60s and reread it. (This was also true, to a lesser
extent, of _Tik-Tok_. _Ozma_ and _Scarecrow_, on the other hand, I
remembered less fondly from my original reading, but liked very much
upon rereading. _DotWiz_ and _Glinda_ I found about the same when I
eventually acquired them as I remembered them. The other Baums I'd owned
all along, so any changes in my perception of them was gradual enough
that I'm not aware of it.)
David Hulan

Date: Sun, 20 Jul 1997 15:06:08 -0400 (EDT)
From: JOdel at aol.com
Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest
So today we start to discuss ROAD. Okay.
The Road to Oz.
Well, yeah. Whatever.
It isn't that ROAD is actually a bad story, the problem is that it is two
stories rammed together. The story of the trek to Oz is actually quite a bit
of fun. The story of the festivities that take place once Dorothy gets to the
Emerald City is a pure example of a hairdrier book. (a mindless, wish
fufillment wallowing in luxury without much point or real purpose. Something
to tranquilize you while you're under the drier.)
In this sense the Emerald City chapteres seem to have all the awkwardness of
the last third of DotWiz, without the side issue of displaying how well or
how poorly these aliens fit into the Ozzian ambience. Polychrome is a fairy,
she fits in just fine. Button-Bright is too stupid, or too uninmpressionable
to do anything but take it all in stride. Ozma had already decided to extend
the Shaggy Man an invitation to stay permanently, and Dorothy was only
intending to stay for the party anyway.
The first segment, however, up to meeting Tik-Tok and Billena, is a pretty
good romp. It also sets the pattern which will be used (or overused) in most
of the later books. That of having the adventurers travel through a series of
eccentric little city states on the way to a set goal. Whether this reflects
an update in worldview on Baum's part (the world is now made up of little
townships along the roads rather than wilderness or sparsely populated
farmlands laid end-to-end for half of forever) I cannot say, but it is not
unlikely.
There has been a bit of discussion over the dangers inherent in Dorothy
having gone off with a nameless tramp to show him the road to Butterfield,
but I cannot speak with any authority as to whether this would have been
typical behavior for a farm child in 191?. One thing which is becomming
noticable is that Dorothy's disposition and general behavior is not improving
with extended experience of the Kansas prairies. I do not think that there
would have ever been an era wherin it would have been considered good manners
for an 11-year-old to tell an adult she would show him the way because he was
"too stupid" to follow directions. Even is said adult was a ragged tramp. In
fact, Dorothy makes quite a habit of calling people stupid in this book.
Admittedly, sometimes she is right. But her bumptious streak shows promise of
her growing up to be the sort of person who knows it all, and cannot be told
anything which does not agree with it. Perhaps she imigrated to Oz just in
time.
Toto's long-awaited return, while satisfying to his fans, does not seem to
count for much here. Which is probably just as well, since is role in Wizard
was mostly to get in Dorothy's way.
The new characters, in general, seem, at first glance, to be a little less
one-dimentional than the Scarecrow, Tin Woodman and Lion, but in Baum's
handling of them it begins to become even more evident that his vision for
the series, and probably for his writing in general, was that all characters,
of any stated ages, in stories intended for children should THINK like
children. With all the absentmindedness and forgetting of relevant details
that this may imply. I suspect that this belief was probably held by most of
the authors of children's stories of his day.
In a way this is good, since the child reader feels comfortably the equal to
any character in the story, and the child characters have every chance of
trading the leadereship role back and forth with the titular adults, rather
than have to just tag along for the ride while the grown-ups run everything
to suit themselves. The adult reader can be made rather impatient by this,
unfortunately. (But then he wasn't telling the story for THEM!)
Again, the somewhat unpleasant note of "all Americans have the right to
impose their attitues upon all they meet, because Americans are the natural
leaders of the universe" intrudes, but at least this time the natives get a
bit of their own back, and the travelers do not seem to like having the
tables turned on them. And even if these "foreign influences" are eventually
thrown off, they do manage to produce an inconvenient, if trivial
entanglement for their durration. The object lession of whether one side or
the other is right to try to make anyone encountered just like oneself is not
dwelt upon, or made particularly clear, however. Obviously Baum was not
thinking along those lines when he wrote it.
The figure of Johnny DoIt is an interesting one of yankee ingenuity
personified, and it is mildly disapointing, given Baum's patriotism, that he
never returns. But then, perhaps Oz is supposed to be sufficiently perfeted
as to not need such ingenious assistance.

Date: Sun, 20 Jul 1997 20:43:57 -0400
From: Richard Bauman <RBauman at compuserve.com>
Subject: Today's Oz Growls
Content-disposition: inline
OK - This is RTO Day - right? Is JOdel off-sides one day? Is so she
should get a one day penalty on the next book. :)
Well, RTO is prefaced by a classic manipulation: ".....a long and exciting
story that it must be saved for another book--and perhaps that book will be
the last story that will ever be told about the Land of Oz." We'll have to
give LFB a zero as a seer. The implicit "Come on kids, buy lots of books
and beg me to write more," is not too appealing.
In this day and age if Shaggy tried to lead Dorothy off somewhere he would
be in the slammer post haste. Then there is also the dognapping of Toto.
It is a rather curious that she is not a little wary of an old tramp. Not
behavior most mothers would have encouraged even in those days. On the
other hand in her day and age if she talked like that to an adult she would
have gotten rapped up the side of her head. Evidence:
P.14 "Dear me!" cried Dorothy; "I shall have to show you the way: your so
stupid."
P.15 "My, but you're clumsy!" said the little girl.
This starts out to be one rude little girl. Happily she shapes up.
P.15 and 42 Give us Ozma's birthday - August 21st.
P. 70 "...I've noticed if I happen to get lost I'm almost sure to come to
the Land of Oz in the end, somehow 'r other....."
Here is ammunition for the "ta'veren" theory as relates to Dorothy and her
travels.
P. 165 And one for the Socialists: "Fortunately money is not known in the
Land of Oz at all. We have no rich, and no poor: for what one wishes the
others all try to give him, in order to make him happy, and no one in all
Oz cares to have more than he can use." [Sorry Eric - no money!]
Swell, to make me happy I'll need a room in the palace, a couple of
servants and lots of free time. Hmmm, that's something like what I have
now, minus the servants.
P.165 "Good!" cried the shaggy man, greatly pleased to hear this. "I also
despise money....."
There is nothing like despising what you can't earn yourself.
P. 176 "......for in the Land of Oz there were no town or villages except
the magnificent Emerald city in its center."
Now why would LFB say this? The troupe just visited Foxville and Dunkiton,
not to mention other towns/cities in other books. Curious.
P.191 Oh, oh Shaggy here is the hook. "Don't they work, at all?" asked the
shaggy man. "To be sure they work," replied the Tin Woodman; "this fair
city could not be built or cared for without labor, nor could the fruit and
vegetables and other food be provided for the inhabitants to eat. But no
one works more than half his time, and the people of Oz enjoy their labors
as much as they do their play." "It's wonderful!" declared the shaggy man.
Hey, did you catch that Shaggy? "Half his time." Get ready for 12 hour
work details, seven days a week. Oh, unless you are part of the royalty,
whose work is ruling. You can see they need some union organizers in
there. What kind of drug do you suppose they slip in the people's food so
they "enjoy their labors as much as they do their play." I think Oz's dark
side is showing in this book.
And how about those Scoodlers? I'm glad I missed this book as a small
sensitive child. All that bit with the soup kettle and "Take them away,"
she commanded the guard, "and at six o'clock run them through the meat
chopper and start the soup kettle boiling." (P.118) This is a little
much.
The plot of this book is almost non-existant. Let's go to Oz, have some
minor adventures on the way and have a birthday party so we can meet all of
Baum's characters from his other books. This book couldn't have done much
to help sales of the sequel. On to "The Emerald City of Oz."
Critically, Bear (:<)

Date: Sun, 20 Jul 1997 20:25:43 +0000
From: David Hulan <davidhulan at ntsource.com>
Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest 07-20-97
Joyce:
I agree in general with your comments on ROAD. Let's see if I can find
some nits to pick...
While I agree that the first half (roughly) of the book, up until the
travelers meet Tik-Tok and Billina, is much superior to the rest of the
book, those parts still read more like average Thompson than most of the
rest of Baum. (DOTWIZ and the parts of EC that don't deal with the Nome
King's invasion have the succession of small communities, but the rest
of Baum's books generally don't.)
One of the things that seemed most noticeable in ROAD, compared with the
other "Dorothy" Oz books, is that she seems a much more sophisticated
young lady (despite her occasional lapses of diction) than elsewhere,
and Uncle Henry seems to be more prosperous. An example is the apple
tree in their yard - where did it come from? From the description of
their house in WIZARD it seems highly unlikely that any kind of tree
would be growing in their yard. And in general, the small fenced fields
(a 10-acre field is small in Kansas) don't sound typical of a
subsistence-level farm.
I've always thought that Dorothy's description of the Shaggy Man as
"stupid" was something she said under her breath, but maybe this is just
because I've always liked Dorothy - remembering that the second book
that I read was WISHING HORSE. I don't think that Shaggy would have been
quite as kind to her if he'd really heard her say that about him.
I too like Johnny Dooit; even if Oz wasn't an appropriate place for him
to demonstrate his Yankee ingenuity, it would seem that Shaggy might
have called on him again in TIK-TOK at a couple of points, or possibly
Dorothy might have remembered him in RINKITINK. (But it leaves the
opportunity for some of us to write JOHNNY DOOIT IN OZ (or maybe THE
CLEVER CRAFTSMAN OF OZ, something like that).)
David Hulan

Date: Sun, 20 Jul 1997 20:19:58 -0700
From: Douglas or Lori Silfen <Duglor at connectnet.com>
Subject: for Oz digest
O.K. all, remember that I just started reading the Oz books about 2
months ago and am only up to book 8.
My views on THE ROAD TO OZ:
The characters: I didn't take to them as I had to characters in
the first 4 books. This includes the Wizard and Jim the Cab Horse in
DOROTHY AND THE WIZARD IN OZ. I didn't care for the Shaggy Man. He
seemed nice and helpful, but there was nothing odd enough or special
enough to like him in my opinion. Polychrome was o.k., but again,
boring. I really didn't care for Button Bright who had no personality
at all.
The Story: Interesting up until they get to Oz. However, the shaggy
man and Buttom Bright's head changing really has no purpose. The
Scoodler part was the best part of the book in my opinion. They made
very interesting and fun villains. Are they in any FF books after
book 8 or any non FF books?
Once our friends get to Oz the books takes a dive for the
worst. The party and all the guests, the jewels, the candies, etc.
It was very poor.
This was the only Oz book I didn't like of the first seven. I hope
there aren't many more like it!!
Douglas in San Diego

Date: Mon, 21 Jul 1997 10:15:24 -0500 (CDT)
From: "Stephen J. Teller" <steller at mail.pittstate.edu>
Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest 07-20-97
Since the subject of ROAD TO OZ has been broached, a few ramdom thoughts.
What sort of person is the Shaggy Man if he casually steals a young girl's
dog and sticks it in his pocket?
How times have changed: Can you imagine a pre-teen girl casually going off
with a bearded stranger and no-one thinking anything wrong about it? The
earlier and later history of the Shaggy Man has been treated in March
Laumer's THE CARELESS KANGAROO OF OZ, which also traces the origins of the
love magnet.
Steve T.

Date: Mon, 21 Jul 1997 19:41:34 +0000
From: David Hulan <davidhulan at ntsource.com>
Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 07-21-97
Bear:
To be fair, Shaggy didn't try "to lead Dorothy off somewhere." Dorothy
volunteered to lead _him_ somewhere. Still a bad idea, of course, even
in 1909 (or whenever the book took place), but all Shaggy did was ask
her the way - and her explanation _was_ pretty confused.
>P. 176 "......for in the Land of Oz there were no town or villages except
>the magnificent Emerald city in its center."
>Now why would LFB say this? The troupe just visited Foxville and Dunkiton,
>not to mention other towns/cities in other books. Curious.
Foxville and Dunkiton weren't in Oz. And in fact, unless you count the
Dainty China Country, no towns or villages had appeared _in Oz_ in any
of the earlier books. (There were probably settlements around the
castles of the WWW, Glinda, and Gayelette, but they might not have been
extensive enough to be called towns or villages.) It was only in EMERALD
CITY that we started running into towns and villages - quite a few of
them - elsewhere in Oz, and even then they were comparatively rare until
Thompson got into the act.
The Oz economy isn't really socialistic, at least as that term is
generally understood today; socialism is an economic system where the
state owns the means of production. The Oz economy is utopian communism:
a system that's as fundamentally unworkable in a human society as strict
Libertarianism, but then the inhabitants of Oz aren't strictly human -
at least, most of them. (When one of them starts acting like a typical
human - Ugu, for instance, or the Su-dic of the Flatheads - he gets
"corrected" as soon as he's found out.)
I don't recall if it's in _Road_ or one of the other earlier books
(probably _Emerald City_), but the "work half the time" line is
amplified to "work half the time and play half the time". Since we know
that Ozites also eat and sleep, the implication is that it's the rest of
their time that's equally divided between work and play. That's much
more reasonable; figure 8 hours a day of sleeping and probably 2 hours
eating and you're looking at a 49-hour work week - which is a lot less
than the typical work week in either industry or agriculture in America
in 1909. 55-60 hours a week was more typical then. 49-hour weeks are
more common than not for "exempt" workers even today, and not uncommon
even for people who have to be paid time and a half for more than 40
hours. (I believe the current average work week for non-exempt people is
around 44.5 hours, though that may be for manufacturing workers only.)
Douglas:
The Shaggy Man's personality is developed more over the next three
books, but although he's likeable enough he isn't as colorful as most of
Baum's characters. Polychrome appears again at some length in TIK-TOK
and TIN WOODMAN, and makes brief appearances in several other books (SKY
ISLAND, PURPLE PRINCE, LUCKY BUCKY, and I may be forgetting one or two);
her character is best developed, I think, in TIN WOODMAN. Button-Bright
has little personality in ROAD, but then it seems clear from the way he
talks that he's probably no more than four years old, maybe younger.
(The statement that he "seemed two or three years younger than Dorothy"
has to be taken with a grain of salt, I think. Depending on how you
assess Oz chronology Dorothy may be nine or ten or eleven in ROAD, but
surely no younger than nine. Button-Bright certainly isn't six or seven
years old; if he were, he'd have to be retarded and his actions in later
books clearly demonstrate that he's not. He's just very young in ROAD.)
SKY ISLAND is the book where he shows up best, though he has significant
roles in SCARECROW and LOST PRINCESS, and a minor one in GLINDA. (And a
strong one in the non-FF GLASS CAT, among others.)
The Scoodlers aren't in any FF book after ROAD. In SCALAWAGONS Neill has
a race he calls "Mifkits" that somewhat resemble the Scoodlers, and are
equated with them on the Haff-Martin map the IWOC sells, but there are
major differences in both the way Neill draws the characters and the
text descriptions of them. As far as I can determine in a quick scan the
Mifkits can't remove their heads, and they certainly aren't two-faced.
The only resemblance I can find is that both races are bad-tempered and
live across the Deadly Desert south of Oz. (The Mifkits are much more
like the Mifkets from JOHN DOUGH AND THE CHERUB, and are probably based
on them, although the Mifkets lived on an island. Some of them might
have colonized the mainland, though, I suppose.)
As to non-FF appearances by Scoodlers, if my MS should win the
Centennial Contest then they appear in it. (If it doesn't win, though,
that sequence would be one of the first things I'd cut in trying to
shave it down to BoW length.) They don't appear in any of the other
non-FF books that I've read, at least that I recall, but I haven't read
more than a quarter of the non-FF books that have been published, if
that. You'd have to ask Steve or Tyler or Chris D. about that.
ROAD is to me the worst Oz book not by Neill, although COWARDLY LION,
OZOPLANING, and HIDDEN VALLEY are little better. At least, to my taste.
Others like one or more of these books better than I do. Certainly
there's no other book that vaguely resembles ROAD in plot (or absence
thereof).
Melody:
Oh, certainly an annual book (and Baum was writing much more than that;
the Oz books and his other more-or-less annual fantasies were only a
fraction of his total writing output) is very likely to result in uneven
quality; sometimes the ideas come, and sometimes they don't. I think the
poorish quality of DOTWIZ and ROAD is almost certainly attributable to
the fact that Baum didn't want to write about Oz and thus had a hard
time coming up with good ideas for Oz books. TIN WOODMAN, on the other
hand, has a pretty good set of ideas behind it; I think it's weak
because he didn't execute it very well. Tolkien is, after all, rather a
special case; he spent something like thirty years writing four books -
and rewriting, and rewriting, and polishing...few authors have the
luxury of that kind of leisure. None, that are trying to make a living
from their writing.
Scott H.:
Baum described Polychrome as a little girl, no older than Dorothy, in
ROAD, it's true (though Neill draws her as a precocious 12 or average
13), but in TIK-TOK she seems to appear old enough that when she says
she's "lost her bow" Shaggy thinks she meant, "beau," and furthermore
suggests himself as a replacement. Little girls didn't have beaux; I
think this is a definite implication that in that book, at least, she
must have appeared in her mid-teens. The appearance of fairies seems to
be quite variable in any case.
Comments on ROAD:
Did anyone else notice the odd typographic convention, which seems to be
used only in ROAD and EMERALD CITY, where contractions include a space -
e.g., would n't, have n't, etc? I've checked and it's not used in the
earlier books, nor in PATCHWORK GIRL, though I haven't checked later
books for it. Anybody know if this was a popular convention in 1909-10,
or if it was some typesetter at R&L's idiosyncrasy?
David Hulan

Date: Tue, 22 Jul 1997 09:13:32 -0600 (CST)
From: Ruth Berman <berma005 at maroon.tc.umn.edu>
Subject: ozzy digest
Bear and Steve Teller: There've been a lot of people in recent years
who've worried about issues of child-safety in Dorothy's willingness to
wander off alone with the Shaggy Man. Re-reading "Road to Oz" now,
though, it occurs to me that this fear tells more about contemporary
phobias than about any real safety issues. When Dorothy gets to the
crossroads and can't find the road to Butterfield, she looks around,
expecting to head home, and is surprised to find that she can't see the
house. This means that she has been (or would have been, without the
interference of magic) *in *sight *of *home *the *whole *time* -- and the
fact that someone might come running out with a pitchfork at need is
probably good protection. (Of course, that leaves the question of how
Uncle Henry, say, felt, when he saw his niece and the tramp suddenly
vanish when the magic spell kicked in, but perhaps Ozma, having had
time to think about such details beforehand, could be assumed to have
included some kind of magical reassurance, even though the narrative
doesn't say so.) Bear and Joyce Odell and David Hulan and Douglas
Silfen all criticize the plot as weak, and there is probably general
agreement. One advantage the book has, though, is that it has some of
Neill's finest artwork in his most elaborate style. The drawings, if
anything, are even busier than in "Dorothy and Wizard," but in "Road" the
effect seems to me elegant rather than confusing. (A disadvantage for
those who don't have early editions is that the drawings are so detailed
as to be difficult to reprint well. Some of the fine lines disappear in a
dark background haze.) Some examples of the art that seem to me
especially appealing are the drawings of Polychrome dancing, with her
robes swirling around her in a cloud of stars, the little bugs off on the
sides of some drawings bemusedly watching the action, or the
shagginess of the drawings of the Shaggy Man (along that line, as a
child I enjoyed -- and still enjoy -- the humor of the cordial hospitality
Ozma shows in arranging for Shaggy to remain shaggy, no matter how
luxuriously dressed).
On the worry over having the Shaggy Man steal Toto -- he isn't really
stealing Toto, is he? He's stealing, but what he's stealing is a few apples
(which might also pose a moral problem, but it seems excessive to worry
about it?). Pocketing Toto is a precaution to get away with the apples. If
magic hadn't kicked in at that point, presumably he would have freed
Toto once he got farther away from the house, and Toto would have run
home.
Ruth Berman

Date: Tue, 22 Jul 1997 10:00:44 -0700
From: Bob Spark <bspark at pacbell.net>
Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 07-21-97
> P. 176 "......for in the Land of Oz there were no town or villages except
> the magnificent Emerald city in its center."
>
> Now why would LFB say this? The troupe just visited Foxville and Dunkiton,
> not to mention other towns/cities in other books. Curious.
Your point about other books is taken, but were Foxville and
Dunkiton located in Oz? Didn't our band of intrepid adventurers have to
cross the deadly desert to get to Oz after being in those places?
I am sorry to read that so many of you don't enjoy _The Road to
Oz_. As I said before, It is one of my favorites. Possible this is
because of the timing of my first reading as a child, but upon
rereading, I find that it still enjoyable. Were I not so much of an
egotist your evaluation would cause me to question my literary
judgement, but I'm afraid that's out of the question :-).
Bob Spark

Date: Tue, 22 Jul 1997 12:54:42 -0500 (CDT)
From: "Stephen J. Teller" <steller at mail.pittstate.edu>
Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 07-21-97
Bear: I believe you are being unfair to Baum's utopia in your
translations. "No one works more than half his time" does not mean people
work twelve hour slifts. "Half *his* time" would mean half of the waking
day, or eight hours, and this is the maximun time for working, not the
standard. Baum would scorn the MGM lyrics: "We get up at noon and go to
work at one. Spend an hour for lunch and then at two we're done (Jolly
Good Fun!"
Similarly "the people of Oz enjoy their labors as much as their play" does
not mean that they were drugged. This is the meaning of *vocation.* In an
ideally arranged society (I am not suggested that such a thing exists
except in imagined utopias) every person would work at the tasks they find
enjoyable. I do not know the origin of the statement: "The test of a
vocation is the love of the tedium it involves"; but I consider it true.
In HENRY IV, PART 1 Shakespeare has the prince say: "If all the year were
sporting holidays,/ To sport would be as tedious to work. But when the
seldom come they wished for come." (I.ii)
Douglas in S.D.:
The Scoodlers do make a reappearance in BEOO's DAGMAR IN OZ, in which the
title character is the Scoodler Queen.
The Shaggy Man is a rather underdeveloped character. He is, I believe, the
only important visiter to Oz from America who is never given a proper name.
(However the Wizard's proper name is not mentioned in FF after DOTWIZ.) He
seems to be a tramp. James W. Riley wrote a poem entitled "The Raggedy
Man" but I do not know of any connection to Baum's character. (There was a
Sissy Spacek film of the same name--on connection).
Steve T.

Date: Tue, 22 Jul 97 11:45:25 (PDT)
From: Dave Hardenbrook <DaveH47 at delphi.com>
Subject: Ozzy Things
L. Frank Baum wrote:
>"Fortunately money is not known in the
>Land of Oz at all. We have no rich, and no poor: for what one wishes the
>others all try to give him, in order to make him happy, and no one in all
>Oz cares to have more than he can use."
I'm sorry so many find this a supremely ridiculous, "socialist-communist"
concept...Ozma is just coming out in favor of a world of cooperation
instead of a "dog-eat-dog" one...
-- Dave and Jellia (Partners in heresy???) :)
:) :)

Date: Tue, 22 Jul 1997 22:04:10 +0600
From: rri0189 at ibm.net
Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 07-21-97
Richard Bauman wrote:
>Well, RTO is prefaced by a classic manipulation: ".....a long and exciting
>story that it must be saved for another book--and perhaps that book will
>be the last story that will ever be told about the Land of Oz." We'll have
>to give LFB a zero as a seer. The implicit "Come on kids, buy lots of books
>and beg me to write more," is not too appealing.
Errr.... On a scale of 0 to 10, that's about a -8. "Emerald City", the
next book, _was_ intended as the last book, and for a few years, it was.
>P. 176 "......for in the Land of Oz there were no town or villages except
>the magnificent Emerald city in its center."
>
>Now why would LFB say this? The troupe just visited Foxville and Dunkiton,
>not to mention other towns/cities in other books. Curious.
Foxville and Dunkiton are not in Oz, and up to this time, there were no
towns or cities in Oz apart from the Emerald City. Indeed, I don't
believe there are any towns in Oz apart from the E.C. in _any_ of the
books, if one excludes isolated princedoms and settlements of various
eccentric races, beings, and characters.
>Hey, did you catch that Shaggy? "Half his time." Get ready for 12 hour
>work details, seven days a week.
I rather fancy that's half of waking hours -- 8 hours a week -- and I dare
say Baum would have expected his audience to understand a Sunday break
as well. But even 12 * 7 wouldn't have been particularly extraordinary
at the time; the 40-hour week is a very recent invention.
>What kind of drug do you suppose they slip in the people's food so
>they "enjoy their labors as much as they do their play."
Well, they could start by having work that's worth the doing, as
opposed to, say, the production of cheaply made, heavily advertised
doodads created solely to winkle a little more cash out of the
masses, with the dual purpose of fooling them into thinking they're
happy and of keeping their bank accounts low enough so that those
who eventually see through the trick don't have enough power or
influence to do anything about it.
If I, for one, should quit my present job, it will be out of nothing
more, less or other than sheer disgust at its general uselessness.
// John W Kennedy -- Hypatia Software -- "The OS/2 Hobbit"

Date: Tue, 22 Jul 1997 20:50:59 -0700
From: Bob Spark <bspark at pacbell.net>
Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 07-23-97
Yo, all!
As to the advisability of Dorothy going off with the shaggy man,
she has a long history of being in some fairly tight jams without any
lasting adverse effects. Given her experience she probably felt that
this was just another of those interesting adventures. If she had those
feelings she was right.
Shaggy's possession of the love magnet must certainly be taken into
account, along with the idea that she is (and almost certainly knows)
under the protection of Ozma and Glinda.
I believe that mention has been made in the past that magic doesn't
work in a civilized country (if the US was at that point or is now
"civilized". Bear keeps bringing up his seniority, so perhaps he can
attest to the conditions then). That idea has been disproven, or Ozma
couldn't regularly check on Dorothy or relocate her to new strange
places such as the crossroads. Whether Shaggy was given the love magnet
by that Eskimo on the Sandwich Islands or stole it from the man in
Butterfield the fact is that the magic of it worked quite well in the
US.
Bob Spark

Date: Wed, 23 Jul 1997 10:47:37 -0500 (EST)
From: sahutchi at cord.iupui.edu
Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 07-23-97
David: Yes, Baum did seem to have a tendency to be quite influenced by
Neill's illustrations (I imagine he liked them more than he would admit),
hence the older Polychrome (though I took the pun as a bit of silliness
from the Shaggy Man's part, as one might joke with a pre-teenager not yet
interested in a romance), and especially, the brown Woozy toy and poem,
and presumably suit, when Baum said he was dark blue in color.
Scott

Date: Wed, 23 Jul 1997 11:20:08 -0500
From: Mike Denio <miked at ti.com>
Subject: For Ozzy Digest
At 07:19 PM 7/22/97 -0700, you wrote:
>
>L. Frank Baum wrote:
>>"Fortunately money is not known in the
>>Land of Oz at all. We have no rich, and no poor: for what one wishes the
>>others all try to give him, in order to make him happy, and no one in all
>>Oz cares to have more than he can use."
>
>I'm sorry so many find this a supremely ridiculous, "socialist-communist"
>concept...Ozma is just coming out in favor of a world of cooperation
>instead of a "dog-eat-dog" one...
>
It's that "and no one ... cares to have more than he can use" part that
makes it a fairy story. Still, its nice to dream.
Is that a quote from _Emerald City_? EC is definitely Baum's tribute (for
lack of a better word) to socialism. Of course his very next Oz book opens
up with two characters who have to leave their home for lack of food...
Mike

Date: Wed, 23 Jul 1997 13:56:21 -0400
From: Richard Bauman <RBauman at compuserve.com>
Subject: TODAY'S OZ GROWLS
David - Thanks for clearing up the town/city question I had. Reading the
books out of order leads to a loss of sequential development. In fact,
with the exception of Jordan and Goodkind, I always wait until a series is
completed before I start it. That wouldn't have been too practical with Oz
books.
Ruth >On the worry over having the Shaggy Man steal Toto -- he isn't really
stealing Toto, is he? He's stealing, but what he's stealing is a few apples
(which might also pose a moral problem, but it seems excessive to worry
about it?). Pocketing Toto is a precaution to get away with the apples. If
magic hadn't kicked in at that point, presumably he would have freed Toto
once he got farther away from the house, and Toto would have run home.
How can I resist this? He isn't really stealing...... but he is stealing!
Is this modern thinking? I can walk in your yard, STEAL your apples and
put your dog in my pocket. Then when I wander away and you have the cops
grab me I can just say, "I wasn't really stealing, I was just taking a
precaution so I could steal." Beam me up.
Dave - How easy it seems to be to think in false dichotomies.
>I'm sorry so many find this a supremely ridiculous, "socialist-communist"
concept...Ozma is just coming out in favor of a world of cooperation
instead of a "dog-eat-dog" one...
Our only choices are "a (socialist-communist) world of cooperation" or a
"dog-eat-dog" one?
Positively, Bear (:<)

Date: Wed, 23 Jul 1997 13:48:21 -0500
From: Gordon Birrell <gbirrell at post.cis.smu.edu>
Subject: Ozzy Digest
David:
>Did anyone else notice the odd typographic convention, which seems to be
>used only in ROAD and EMERALD CITY, where contractions include a space -
>e.g., would n't, have n't, etc? I've checked and it's not used in the
>earlier books, nor in PATCHWORK GIRL, though I haven't checked later
>books for it. Anybody know if this was a popular convention in 1909-10,
>or if it was some typesetter at R&L's idiosyncrasy?
I too have wondered about this. It's odd but it's logical. The separation
of the contraction only applies to instances in which the verb maintains its
distinct character (as in David's examples). Don't and can't, for example,
appear in _Road_ as one word, because do n't and can n't would bear no
resemble to what is actually spoken. (Incidentally: tsk, tsk! R&B, not
R&L!)
I think Bob Sparks is right: we shouldn't be judging this book solely on
the critical standards of adults, though it is true that the best children's
literature holds up to critical scrutiny from every angle. I remember
enjoying _Road_ immensely when I was little, and I enjoyed the whole thing,
not just the "adventure" passages of the first half.
One thing we might keep in mind before we condemn the plotless sections of
the book out of hand: the readers of Baum's day were more conditioned to
these long descriptive passages than the readers of today's page-turners.
The Realist novel of the nineteenth century routinely included lengthy
static passages that established the social reality of the fiction through
elaborately detailed descriptions. In Balzac's _Pere Goriot_, for instance,
the plot doesn't even begin to move until you have gottten through sixty
pages describing the layout and furnishings of Madame Vauquier's boarding
house, the rents charged for each apartment, the character and background of
every one of the tenants, the food they typically eat, and so on.
The Realist technique of exhaustive descriptions goes right up into the
first decade of the twentieth century; Thomas Mann's _Buddenbrooks_ is a
good example from this period. _The Road to Oz_ is certainly anything but a
Realist novel, but I think what Baum is doing here--rather daringly--is to
transport the realist descriptive technique to a fantasy narrative, and
thereby to give the fantasy world the kind of grounding in minute detail
that the Realist novel provided. Who was there, what they wore, where they
came from, what they ate, where they sat at the table, what kind of music
they heard and danced to: these are all questions that readers of Realist
fiction expected to see answered. In the last third of _Road_, Baum makes
Oz almost as tangible and as fully imagined as Balzac's Paris. For me, a
kid who didn't grow up on Indiana Jones and Saturday morning cartoons, the
long descriptions weren't a problem at all; they just made Oz seem more real.
Name that tune:
Does anyone know the source of that little snatch of music on the dedication
page? What makes it particularly intriguing is the tempo marking "L'istesso
tempo," which indicates that this is the beginning of an interlude that is
to be played at the same tempo as the preceding material. On the other
hand, given the extraordinary wittiness and sophistication of Neill's
illustrations for this book, I think it is altogether possible that these
two bars of music aren't a real quotation at all, and the tempo marking
refers to a preceding passage that doesn't even exist.
Speaking of sophistication, I'm much amusing at the frontispiece ("Calling
on Jack Pumpkinhead"), which depicts Jack's pumpkin cottage as fully
equipped for the modern age with a telephone and electrical wiring. Am I
right in thinking that the four wires mean that he has *two* circuits in
that little cottage?
Another thing that struck me on this latest reading: the interior of Ozma's
palace ("In the Royal Palace of Oz," p. 209 of the R&B and BoW editions) is
a dead ringer for the Great Hall at Breakers, the Vanderbild estate at
Newport, R.I. The huge ornamental fireplace between two-story Corinthian
pilasters, the high arched doorways, the second-floor balconies with
ironwork railings: it's all there. For that matter, the illustration of
the exterior of Ozma's palace (p. 193) also has some resemblance to rear
elevation of Breakers, particularly in the second-floor loggias. On the
other hand, the Vanderbilt place doesn't have a great staircase, let alone a
staircase adorned with likenesses of Billina, Eureka, Dorothy, the
Scarecrow, and the Tin Woodman. (Incidentally, what character is depicted
in the statue in the right foreground, the man with the cane and the birds
circling his head?)
--Gordon Birrell

Date: Wed, 23 Jul 1997 23:35:33 -0400
From: Tyler Jones <tnj at compuserve.com>
Subject: Oz
JoDel:
Someone made the same comment about _Road_ in a BUGLE review. That is, once
we get to Oz, the story is for all intents and purposes over. This event
usually happens when we reach the Emerald City near the last chapter. In
this case, the "end" was extended quite a bit.
Bear:
I hereby give Baum the "Bill Gates" award, for his: "Well, this book may be
good, but the NEXT version upgrade (I mean story) will be even better!"
Nitpick for Bear:
The cities visited in _RTO_ (Did Baum found the Rent To Own stores?) are
not in Oz, so the TIn Woodman's comment is still valid, although ultimately
false, as we learn from later authors.
Of course, as David Hulan has pointed out, many of the "cities" in Oz are
very small, both in size and population, so EC may be the only actual
"city", at least by our standards.
Doug/Lori:
THe Scoodlers (at least the Queen, IIRC) returns in a non-FF book. Her
name, according to Chris Dulabone, is Dagmar.
Scott:
As for Polychrome, I claim that the same conspiracy that keeps us of the
outer world believing in Ozma as a little girl also applies to Polychrome.
If you only knew what I knew...
David:
I seem to remember Baum mentioning a town near the Tin Woodman's castle in
_Land_, but we do not visit it, and we haven't heard a peep from it.
Overall though, Baum's Oz, outside of EC, is quite rural.
Polychrome:
As a fariy who has lived for "thousands of years" (from _TIK-TOK_), she can
probably be any age she wishes.
--Tyler Jones

Date: Thu, 24 Jul 1997 23:33:23 -0400
From: Tyler Jones <tnj at compuserve.com>
Subject: Oz
Road to Oz:
Now that this is the BCF, here's a poser. Has anybody ever come up with an
explanation as to how Button-Bright got to that lonely spot on the road?
This book happens before the Magic Umbrella, so there must be some other
answer.
Mike:
That stuff about no money, etc. was either from _Emerald City_ or _Road_.
By the time of the THompson administration, though, Oz was quite
commercial, with an economy that seemed largely based on the barter system.
--Tyler Jones

Date: Fri, 25 Jul 1997 08:09:59 -0400 (EDT)
From: earlabbe at juno.com (Earl C. Abbe)
Subject: Ozzy Digest Submission
In the 7/24 Digest, Gordon Birrell asks, <Does anyone know the source of
that little snatch of music on the [_Road_] dedication page? What makes
it particularly intriguing is the tempo marking "L'istesso tempo," which
indicates that this is the beginning of an interlude that is to be played
at the same tempo as the preceding material.>
Perhaps it is the tempo that is the important thing. The dedication is
"To My First Grandson / Joslyn Stanton Baum". The first grandson was
probably the beginning of a new generation of Baums which would carry on
"the same tempo as the preceding material."
Gordon also asks who is depicted as the statue of the man with a cane
outside Ozma's palace.
I think the statue is meant to be the Wizard, who is drawn in both _Road_
and _DotWiz_ with a top hat and cane. Additionally, the shape at the
statue's feet may be a carpetbag, such as the Wizard carried in _DotWiz_.
Earl Abbe

Date: Fri, 25 Jul 1997 11:31:49 +0000
From: David Hulan <davidhulan at ntsource.com>
Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 07-24-97
John K.:
>Indeed, I don't believe there are any towns in Oz apart from the E.C.
>in _any_ of the books, if one excludes isolated princedoms and
>settlements of various eccentric races, beings, and characters.
That, of course, excludes most of Oz, but I guess if you mean that there
isn't a record of another town or village inhabited by the same kind of
people who make up the majority of the population of the EC, without a
local ruler of some sort, I can't think of a counter-example in the FF.
I'm reasonably sure none is visited, but not sure that there aren't
references to one or more. (There are references to several such in
GLASS CAT, though, and probably in other non-FF books.)
Bob:
Apparently only certain kinds of magic don't work in America. The Love
Magnet seems to be the only magical _device_ that works here, if you
confine yourself to the Baum Oz books, though if you extend it to the
other Baum books that are definitely connected with Oz you have others -
Button-Bright's umbrella and the Great Elixir (which I think can be
considered a "device" - anyhow, a material entity with magical
properties), at least, and there's _something_ that lets Santa Claus
cover the whole world in one night. And magical devices that work at a
distance, like the Magic Belt and Magic Picture and Great Book of
Records, seem to work on things in America as long as the user is in Oz.
But Glinda seems quite certain that the Magic Belt would not work here,
or the silver shoes, and Dorothy is sure that Tik-Tok wouldn't work here
either. In other Baum works, though, and in Oz books by other authors,
there's plenty of magic working in America.
Scott H.:
Baum - writing from an omniscient POV - says that Shaggy thought Polly
meant "beau", so I feel that he must have thought she was old enough to
have one. Although Shaggy's suggestion that she take him as a
replacement was almost certainly meant in jest.
(Unless, of course, you accept Laumer's theory on the subject, which I
don't.)
Gordon:
R&B, of course. Slip of the mind.
Thanks for calling that snatch of music to my attention; I'd never even
noticed it before. I'd guess that if it's anything, it's from some sort
of lullaby, in the context of the picture. On the other hand, all those
16th notes indicate something rather more lively than the usual lullaby,
so who knows? (I don't have anything to play it on, and my pitch isn't
good enough to take a good guess at the tune without an instrument.)
I imagine that the top-hatted statue with the birds circling its head
would be the Wizard; he's the only Oz character we've met up to this
point who wears a top-hat, anyhow (as Neill usually draws him). Of
course, it may be someone Neill just made up, but all the other statues
represent characters we've met.
Dick:
I agree that I've never read an FF Oz book that I didn't enjoy to some
degree, even _Wonder City_ and _Scalawagons_. (I can't say that I've
never read an Oz book that I didn't enjoy to some degree; there are a
couple of later non-FF books that are pretty bad.)
David Hulan

Date: Fri, 25 Jul 1997 12:11:23 -0500
From: Gordon Birrell <gbirrell at post.cis.smu.edu>
Subject: Ozzy Digest
Joyce:
Your comments on _Road_ were, as usual, very incisive. There does seem to
be a strong element of xenophobia in the book, not only in the travelers'
reactions to Foxville and Dunkiton but also in the phobic attitudes of the
foxes and donkeys to each other's worlds. What I find particularly
interesting and unusual here is the fear that the foreign culture will
*like* you so much that they will try to make you over into their own image,
literally change your head to make you one of their own. Could this be a
distinctly American form of xenophobia? I.e., other countries are worried
about cultural invasion and having foreign values forced upon them by an
essentially hostile superpower; Americans fear they will be *loved* so much
that they will lose their cultural identity.
Taking that thought a little further: the fear of being incorporated (in
the root sense of that word) into a foreign culture reaches a nightmarish
climax in the Scoodlers episode, where the inhabitants literally intend to
incorporate the travelers by ingesting them.
It would be interesting sometime to catalog the various kinds of dangers
that the heroes and heroines of Oz books encounter (enslavement,
imprisonment, enchantment, transformation, etc.). I'd thought about this
earlier when Tyler made enslavement the prototypical danger in his generic
Oz plot. Are the dangers in Thompson's books generally more benign than in
Baum's?
--Gordon Birrell

Date: Fri, 25 Jul 1997 12:04:13 -0700
From: Barbara Belgrave <"belgrave at teleport.com" at teleport.com>
Subject: Ozzy Digest
RTO...
In the Musicker chapter it is said "I'm accustomed only to the music of
the spheres". What exactly is music of the spheres? I just played a
computer game that also had the music of the spheres in it.
In the Facing the Scoodlers chapter, the pic of the scoodler shows his
toes pointing up but the description of them says "toes curled down like
a bird's". Hmmmmmmm I just have the Del Rey books and the pics are
horrible. They are very hard to make out.
In the Tik-Tok and Billina chapter, if they crossed the Deadly Desert
and just passed the Truth Pond and are heading for the Emerald City then
how are they traveling in a northwest direction? Looks northeast to me.
In the Princess Ozma of Oz chapter, it says the Scarecrow went to the
Munchkin Country for straw. Wouldn't you have thought the straw would
have grown where everything was yellow, like the Winkie Country?
Do we hear more about Chick the Cherub in later books? I'm so grateful
when all of you are so careful not to tell what future books are about
in such detail that it gives some of the story line away.
Do we ever hear the Woggle-Bug's "Ode to Ozma" in any story?
Do we know what the love story was that the Tin Woodman tells for Ozma?
Wonder why the Queen of the Field Mice wasn't invited to the party.
I think the Musicker should have been invited to the party. Maybe Ozma
could have done some magic and made the notes he played not be so
annoying to others. I just think it wasn't a very good example to teach
children. Just because he was different and maybe a little annoying he
couldn't go. Maybe he would have sat quietly in a corner and enjoyed
the festivities. Or maybe just being around Ozma could have made his
music sound soothing and comforting. Many a swan started as ducks.
(figuratively speaking of course)
I have another map problem in _Emerald City of Oz_ but I'll wait till we
get there for that one.
Till next time.....
Barb B

Date: Fri, 25 Jul 1997 22:02:50 -0200
From: amyjones at MindSpring.COM (Amy Jones)
Subject: for Ozzy Digest
Barb B:
Polychrome mentions "the music of the spheres." I heard this phrase first
in the church hymn, "This is my Father's World" which has the following as
its first line:
"This is my Father's World, and to my listening ears all nature
sings, and round me rings the music of the spheres." However, this hymn was
not set to music until 1915, which was after "Road to Oz" was published.
From the "Dictionary of Classical, Biblical, and Literary Allusions":
"Pythagoras, in his search for universal harmonies, established that all
solids in motion emit musical tones, and applying this law to the planets,
stated that their collective tones constituted the 'music of the spheres.'
This phrase suggests a harmony inherent in the heavens, but imperceptible
to man."
Amy Jones

Date: Fri, 25 Jul 1997 21:49:36 +0000
From: David Hulan <davidhulan at ntsource.com>
Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 07-25-97
Barbara B.:
The music of the spheres originally meant the music that was made by the
celestial spheres of a Ptolemaic universe rubbing together as they
rotated. Later, it became synonymous with Outstanding Music.
Baum also said the Scoodlers' feet looked like an inverted T, which
would imply up-curling toes. I think Neill took his cue from that line.
Baum confused east and west a lot.
Chick doesn't appear in any more Oz books; he's a main character in JOHN
DOUGH AND THE CHERUB, which I think you can get from Dover. Baum's
third-best non-Oz book, imho (after SKY ISLAND and QUEEN ZIXI OF IX).
David Hulan

Date: Sat, 26 Jul 1997 12:00:34 +0300 (IDT)
From: Gili Bar-Hillel <gili at scso.com>
Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 07-25-97
Barbara B.- I am sure you will have many interesting answeers to your
question about the music of the spheres, because so many of the readers of
the digest are very knowledgeable about literature as well as astronomy.
All that I know is that the music of the spheres is supposed to be the
music that the stars make, and is a harmony that pulses through the whole
world. It occurs in many stories, most noticeable Madeline L'Engles Time
series (A Wrinkle in Time, A Wind in the Door, A Swiftly Tilting Planet -
they go downhill from there), but I don't know what the source for this
belief is.
|\ _,,,---,,_
/,`.-'`' -. ;-;;,_ Gili Bar-Hillel,
|,4- ) )-,_..;\ ( `'-' gili at scso.com
'---''(_/--' `-'\_)

Date: Sat, 26 Jul 1997 08:52:54 -0400 (EDT)
From: earlabbe at juno.com (Earl C. Abbe)
Subject: Ozzy Digest Submission
Speaking of realpolitik, Gordon Birrell's directing our attention to the
statue of the Wizard (p.193, _Road_) has provoked a comment from my
informant. That *is* a carpetbag displayed at the statue's feet, and
therein lies a tale.
At Glinda's suggestion the statue was commissioned to commemorate Oscar
Diggs' return to Oz. Also at her suggestion, the statue was made to show
the Wizard just as he appeared on his return, carpetbag and all. This
was to be in the spirit of the amusing rescued boy fountain figure in
Denmark, which the Oz notables had all seen in the Magic Picture.
Privately, however, Glinda told Oscar that the statue was to remind him
how he came back with little more than a carpetbag -- and how he would
leave in just the same way, if he did not fit into the role generously
being offered.
Earl Abbe (& Informant)

Date: Sun, 27 Jul 1997 00:01:57 -0500 (CDT)
From: Robin Olderman <robino at tenet.edu>
Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 07-23-97
Jodel wrote:>>Toto's long-awaited return, while satisfying to his fans,
>does not seem tocount for much here. Which is probably just as well, since
>is role in Wizard was mostly to get in Dorothy's way.
No way! Toto plays a major role in WIZARD by supplying motivation for
Dorothy to slap the Lion (who threatens the doggie). This, in turn,
allows Baum to reveal the Lion's cowardice to us. It's Toto who is
responsible for revealing the Wizard as a humbug AND it's Toto who causes
Dorothy to lose out on a balloon ride home. We're told right up front
that Toto brightens Dorothy's life: he's important to her. Baum uses the
character very well.
ROAD: I really liked it as a kid, and I still do. My perception of it is
undoubtedly colored by the gorgeous illos. I'm a fairly visual person,
and Neill's linework is incredible. He outdid himself, apparently in an
attempt to make the book visually strong enough so that the buyer and/or
reader wouldn't resent the lack of color plates or colored inking. I
always wondered, though, about the Scoodlers. They were
terrifying...probably the most terrifying of all Baum Oz creations and
among the most frightening of any fantasy figures anywhere in anyone
else's tales. Boy, did Baum change from the original idea of keeping the
nightmare figures out of Oz!
--Robin

Date: Mon, 28 Jul 1997 10:58:46 -0600 (CST)
From: Ruth Berman <berma005 at maroon.tc.umn.edu>
Subject: ozzy digest
David Hulan: The other couple of books where Polychrome shows up
briefly are "Grampa" (helping Tatters and company over the rainbow) and
(very briefly) "Wonder City," and another brief appearance for Button
Bright is in "Magical Mimics."
Steve Teller: Shaggy's name apparently gets mentioned in the stage
version of "Tik-Tok." The Wizard's name gets a later mention in
"Ozoplaning." Button Bright's name is given in "Sky Island," but I think
never mentioned in the Oz books.
Bear: It looks to me as if you sometimes don't re-read previous postings
for context. It would probably be a good idea to do that (or do it more
often) so as to avoid losing track of what's going on. You thought it was
ridiculous for me to say that "having the Shaggy Man steal Toto"
shouldn't be considered a worry, because he wasn't stealing Toto, he
was only stealing a few apples. "Is this modern thinking?" you ask
sarcastically. No. It is an answer to your question, a day or two earlier,
"What sort of person is the Shaggy Man if he casually steals a young
girl's dog and sticks it in his pocket?" If you don't think stealing a child's
dog is significantly worse than stealing a few apples, you shouldn't have
asked the original question.
Barbara Belgrave: Probability of Winkie straw -- at least in the earlier
books, Baum seems to have thought of the Munchkins as more
agricultural, and the Winkie country as more wild and unsettled. So in
the earlier books he would probably have thought of straw as something
easier to come by among the Munchkins, although by the later books it
seems to be a more settled country. // Chick the Cherub is mentioned in
"Magic," but does not appear again in the Oz books.
Ruth Berman

Date: Mon, 28 Jul 1997 09:19:30 -0500 (CDT)
From: "Stephen J. Teller" <steller at mail.pittstate.edu>
Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 07-25-97
Barbara B. asked what is the music of the spheres. The ancients believed
that the universe was composed on many concentric crystaline spheres with
the earth at the center. As these spheres revolved they produced exquisite
music, which we do not hear because it is always present and our senses are
numbed to it.
Steve T.

Date: Mon, 28 Jul 1997 15:50:31 -0500
From: Gordon Birrell <gbirrell at post.cis.smu.edu>
Subject: Ozzy Digest
Earl:
I like your idea about the tempo marking "l'istesso tempo" as an expression
of hope that the Baum family will continue in its present course and at the
same pace. Still, I think there's a good chance that this is a quotation
from a real piece of music.
David:
It could indeed by a lullaby. The words "Sleep, sleep, sleep little baby"
or "Close your eyes, little baby" fit the rhythm very well, and it would be
at a suitably soothing tempo if you played it ca. quarter note = 60 M.M.
I've been amusing myself thinking about how the next musical phrase might
go, but the first twelve or so options don't sound particularly noteworthy
(as it were).
--Gordon Birrell

Date: Mon, 28 Jul 1997 16:00:04 +0000
From: David Hulan <davidhulan at ntsource.com>
Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 07-28-97
Earl:
Actually the "amusing rescued boy fountain" you refer to is in Belgium,
not Denmark, if you're talking about the "Maneken Pis". It's on a corner
in Brussels not far from the Grand Place.
Interesting question: if Chick, or one of the other characters from the
lands outside of Oz, like Bud or Fluff or Inga, were used in a current
book, should that character have aged? It's reasonably clear that people
do age in Noland and Ix, and probably Pingaree; I forget what it says at
the end of JOHN DOUGH about whether Chick grows up or not. But do they
age at the same rate as we do, or much more slowly? Anyone have an
opinion?
The odd typographic convention with contractions seems to continue
through SKY ISLAND, in fact, so books from R&B from 1909-1912 used it,
and not other years as far as I can tell (without an exhaustive check).
David Hulan

Date: Tue, 29 Jul 1997 08:22:29 +0600
From: rri0189 at ibm.net
Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 07-25-97
David Hulan wrote:
>John K.:
>>Indeed, I don't believe there are any towns in Oz apart from the E.C.
>>in _any_ of the books, if one excludes isolated princedoms and
>>settlements of various eccentric races, beings, and characters.
>
>That, of course, excludes most of Oz, but I guess if you mean that there
>isn't a record of another town or village inhabited by the same kind of
>people who make up the majority of the population of the EC, without a
>local ruler of some sort, I can't think of a counter-example in the FF.
Actually, it occurs to me that there is one: the Sapphire City. But in
general, the ordinary folk of Oz seem to be subsistence farmers, since
there don't even seem to be any market towns. I have always (even without,
I think, influence from the movie) vaguely supposed that Dorothy's first
landing among the Munchkins was in some sort of village, but there is
nothing concrete to make it so, just a feeling, and the fact that were
are three (?) witnesses to the WWE's demise, who do not appear from the
illustrations (I think we must give Denslow's a textual authority beyond
the usual, due to the collaborative nature of tWWoO) to be dressed for
farm labor. The ready availability of Winkie artisans also raises a
question in the west.
Barbara Belgrave wrote:
>In the Musicker chapter it is said "I'm accustomed only to the music of
>the spheres". What exactly is music of the spheres? I just played a
>computer game that also had the music of the spheres in it.
A quasi-mystical thought out of classical Greek science. The "spheres"
are the crystal spheres that carry the planets (that is, the moon,
Venus, Mercury, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn) and the fixed stars
in their more or less daily orbits around the Earth. The "music of
the spheres" is the sound that they obviously make, because they move
at certain definite ratios to each other, and musical strings vibrate
at certain definite ratios to each other (the lapse in logic here is
not mine), which is obviously too refined for human ears, since we
don't hear it.
Not that Baum, of course, believed in Ptolemaic astronomy, let alone
Pythagorean numerology -- the phrase "music of the spheres" was by
Baum's time, and still is, purely conventional.
>Do we hear more about Chick the Cherub in later books? I'm so grateful
>when all of you are so careful not to tell what future books are about
>in such detail that it gives some of the story line away.
Not in any later book, but in the earlier "John Dough and the Cherub".
>Do we ever hear the Woggle-Bug's "Ode to Ozma" in any story?
>Do we know what the love story was that the Tin Woodman tells for Ozma?
No and no, although one might guess.
// John W Kennedy -- Hypatia Software -- "The OS/2 Hobbit"

Date: Tue, 29 Jul 1997 08:20:29 -0600 (CST)
From: Ruth Berman <berma005 at maroon.tc.umn.edu>
Subject: ozzy digest music
Gordon Birrell asked about the snatch of music on the "Road" dedication
page. A possibility occurred to me, but I didn't have enough of the music
to prove it or disprove it. I wonder if someone ele in the group does. I
thought it might be one of the Baum-Tietjens songs from the stage-version
of "The Wizard" (or, perhaps, one of the Baum-Chapin songs from
"Wogglebug"). In the process, it occurred to me to wonder if the "Oz Two
Step" on the piano in the Tin Woodman's castle might be a quotation from
there, too. It's so teeny that I can't make out the notes at all, but it
looks elaborate enough to have been copied from something real rather than
mocked up by itself. The time signature is 9/8, and the key might be F.
I have copies of two of the Baum-Tietjens songs, "When You Love Love Love,"
and "The Scarecrow," and I notice that the verse of "When You Love Love
Love" is in 9/8 time, and the song includes a "L'istesso tempo" marking, so
it seems a reasonable possibility that both quotations might be from
Tietjens music, but they're not from "When You Love Love Love" (or "The
Scarecrow" either). If some of you have copies of the other songs, you
might try looking to see if you spot a match.
Ruth Berman

Date: Wed, 30 Jul 1997 10:06:26 -0500 (CDT)
From: "Stephen J. Teller" <steller at mail.pittstate.edu>
Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 07-29-97
Now, on to ROAD:
Someone, I believe--I cannot easily call up old digests, and things will
get worse next month until I can get back to my office, commented on the
fact that the Queen of the Field Mice was not invited to Ozma's birthday
party. However, she was there. You can see he next to Santa Claus in the
picture on 243, drinking a toast to Ozma.
On the subject of Neill's illustrations to the book, one of my vavorite
little touches is on the tailpiece to "The Grand Banquet" (page 245) showig
a procession of waiters carrying food to the banquet, and the 5th waiter
has a bottle labled "Catsup."
The story the Tin Woodman tells about Dyna's blue bear rug provides some
problems in terms of later Oz lore. In the first place two beings die in
the course of the story, the crooked Sorcerer and the blue bear. More
interesting is the statement that the living rug can't speak because, "It
has no breath in a solid body to push the words out of its mouth." But what
being broughbeing brought to life by the powder of life *did* have lungs?
Certainly the wooden Sawhorse and the bodyless Gump were lungless, and Jack
Pumpkinhead's body was a piece of birch bark.
Two abridgements of ROAD deserve to be mentioned. The 1939 Rand McNally
Junior Edition (one of 6 Jr. eds released that year) is notable as the only
edition of ROAD to have Neill's illustrations in color. It is very
pleasent to see Polychrome's robes in full color, and in the picture of the
Toast to Ozma (mentioned earlier in this post) the Queen of the Field Mice
shows up more clearly with tan body and red robe. This 62 page version is
a real collectors item. The story omits the the Scoodlers and the Musiker,
but is skillfully shortened.
The 1951 Little Golden Book illustrated byHarry McNaught is a really
extreme abridgement. It omits Button-Bright, Dunkiton, the Musiker, the
Scoodlers, and Tik-Tok and Billina. Tik-Tok and Billina (and King
Kik-a-Bray) do appear in a picture of guests arriving for the party. H. M.
Woggle-Bug T. E. is in the picture looking totally human. Thisv was one of
three LGBs of Oz books that came out at that time (the others bein EMERALD
CITY and TIN WOODMAN--in one of them was a picture of Ozma looking in her
Magic Television Set).
It might be mentioned that by 1939, when the Jr. Editions were published,
Oz books were no longer being printed with color plates (or pictures) so
these abridgements were the only Oz books with color at the time.
Steve T.

Date: Wed, 30 Jul 1997 11:04:51 +0000
From: David Hulan <davidhulan at ntsource.com>
Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 07-29-97
Ruth:
Thought I mentioned Button-Bright's appearance in MAGICAL MIMICS; I
remember that one quite well. I'd forgotten Polychrome's appearances in
GRAMPA and WONDER CITY, though.
It's worth point out, regarding Shaggy's "stealing" apples, that he only
picked up windfalls. Once an apple has fallen off its tree, it needs to
be eaten within a few hours unless it's to be used for making cider or
butter or other by-product, because the fall bruises it. While in a
technical sense he was stealing the apples, it's extremely unlikely that
Uncle Henry would have refused him permission to pick up all he wanted
if he'd been there to ask (even if Shaggy hadn't had the Love Magnet).
John K.:
I'd consider the Sapphire City to fall into your "isolated princedoms"
category, at least as much as Perhaps City or Shamsbad, to mention a
couple. Certainly it's isolated (until after the end of the only book
where we actually visit it), and while Cheeriobed is called "king", so
are Peer Haps and Ree Alla Bad.
I think there must be villages of normal people scattered around Oz;
even subsistence farmers need the services of millers and blacksmiths
and a few other specialists within a walk of an hour or two. We just
never have occasion to see them in any of the books.
I'm sure Baum didn't believe in a Ptolemaic universe, but the Oz
universe seems to resemble a Ptolemaic more than a Copernican one.
(Although this resemblance is more pronounced in Thompson than in Baum.)
David Hulan

Date: Wed, 30 Jul 1997 14:06:48 -0500
From: Gordon Birrell <gbirrell at post.cis.smu.edu>
Subject: Ozzy Digest
Ruth Berman:
Thanks very much for checking your sheet music for that quotation on the
dedication page of _Road_. Baum's own musicals are indeed a likely source
for that quotation, and I hope other members of the Digest will help us out
here.
I took another look at the illustration of Dorothy playing the Oz Two-Step
at the Tin Woodman's castle. Even with a high-powered magnifying glass,
it's hard to make out much of that score, though you are right, Ruth, that
it appears to be in the key of F major, or possibly even B-flat major.
Other than that, it looks like a two-step by Scriabin, with all those
improbable flamboyant runs. Polychrome's dance routine (lean back and kick
high) echoes the steps performed by the women dancers in the illustration on
the author's page: that Oz Two-Step is apparently quite an athletic little
dance.
To judge from the rococo case and the short keyboard, incidentally, the Tin
Woodman's piano is an expensive antique from the eighteenth century. One of
the many percs of being Emperor!
A number of people have commented on the deterioration of quality in the
illustrations in later printings. I agree. The detail work is so
incredibly fine in these drawings that the printing plates began to wear
down almost immediately. I can see a slight decline even within earlier and
later printings in the first state. When I first read the book (an R&L
reprint from the forties) I thought that Shaggy looked distinctly sinister,
particularly in that full-page illustration with the love magnet on p. 23.
In the much earlier printings you can see that he does in fact have very
kindly eyes.
--Gordon Birrell

Date: Thu, 31 Jul 1997 16:28:50 -0600 (CST)
From: Ruth Berman <berma005 at maroon.tc.umn.edu>
Subject: ozzy digest
Gordon Birrell: I was thinking some more about the possibility that the bit
of music in the dedication to "Road" is a quotation from the 1902 stage
"Wizard." I wonder if anyone in the group has (or knows someone who has)
music for the "Ball of All Nations" group of songs. The "Irish" song
includes a line, "Arrah, come all ye now and listen," that would fit those
notes, and a song about how the "Patsy Casey twins" didn't get christened
because they couldn't agree on a place would be sort of appropriate, in a
comically backhand way, to a dedication to a newborn grandchild.
Bear: I don't think you re-read the message you posted yourself to which I
was replying when you replied to me. To repeat: (1) you complained, What
sort of a person steals a child's pet dog?; (2) I replied, Shaggy was not
stealing Toto, he was stealing apples and presumably intended to free Toto
when he got out of sight; (3) you replied, Stealing is stealing, and
added sarcastically, "Is this modern thinking?"; and (4) I commented, "If
you don't think stealing a child's dog is significantly worse than stealing
a few apples, you shouldn't have asked the original question." I suppose
it's inaccurate to say you shouldn't have asked the original question,
since at the time you thought Shaggy intended to steal Toto. But your
stealing-is-stealing answer, in the context of that sequence of messages,
seems to imply that you think stealing a few apples is just as bad as
stealing a child's dog. If you do, that point could be argued (or
dismissed as something-we-agree-to-disagree-on) -- but it seems unlikely
that you really think stealing a few apples is just as bad as stealing a
child's dog. (This seems an overly-lengthy answer, even verging on
Rigmarolese, but there didn't seem to be a shorter way to do it.) Sorry
it seems like a "flame" to you, but wasn't so intended.
Ruth Berman

Date: Fri, 01 Aug 1997 21:22:29 -0400
From: Richard Bauman <RBauman at compuserve.com>
Subject: Today's Oz Growls
Ruth - I guess we should never assume we know what a person means even
though we read what they say. :) I understood you to say that it was all
right for Shaggy to put Toto in his pocket because he was just doing it so
he could pick up a few apples. It also seems you are reading his mind by
assuming he is going to release Toto later. I will go on record that his
behavior is not all right with me. If you walk into a jewelry store and
put a diamond ring in your pocket I don't think the management would be too
receptive if you told them it was just so you could pick up (steal) a few
inexpensive pieces of costume jewelry and you were going to put the diamond
back. I may be confused as to your position but this seems as indefensible
as Shaggies behavior. I am guessing that this is really two antithetical
views of private property colliding. Nes pas? And yes, I understand the
difference between larceny and pilfering. Toto was the former and the
apples were the latter.
Tiredly, Bear (:<)

Date: Sun, 3 Aug 1997 16:00:59, -0500
From: NQAE93A at prodigy.com (MR ROBERT J COLLINGE)
Subject: Ozzy Digest, 08-02-97
Happy Sunday!
About the Shaggy man stealing apples: I do not believe anyone would
say anything to him for "shagging" them off the ground. Dog-knapping
is another story.
Ozzy is as Ozzy does, Bob C.

Date: Mon, 04 Aug 1997 19:28:45 +0000
From: David Hulan <davidhulan at ntsource.com>
Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 08-04-97
ROAD:
One thing I've mildly wondered about: my atlas, at least, doesn't reveal
any "Butterfield" in Kansas. On the other hand, although there's no
community of "Butterfield" that it goes through today, "Butterfield
Road" is one of the main east-west drags in the western suburbs of
Chicago, where I believe Baum was still living at the time. (If he'd
left for California, it wasn't long before. I know his introduction was
from Coronado, but he vacationed there for a few years before he moved,
IIRC.) I wonder if anyone knows whether (a) "the road to Butterfield"
might have been based on "Butterfield Road", and (b) whether there
really was a community of Butterfield that Butterfield Road went to
(most named "Road"s around here do go to, or at least toward, the
communities they're named for) back around 1910? This would, of course,
have been Way Out In The Country in those days, 35 miles or so from the
Loop. But Baum might have motored out this way on Sunday afternoon
drives and picked up on the name...
David Hulan

Date: Tue, 05 Aug 1997 09:01:08 -0600 (CST)
From: Ruth Berman <berma005 at maroon.tc.umn.edu>
Subject: ozzy digest
Bob Collinge: Dear me, here's another one worried that Shaggy was
dog-napping. Granted, it's a possibility -- but the probability is so low
that it's close to zero. The argument that someone who'd steal an apple
is just as likely to steal a dog strikes me as unlikely. The idea that he
might seems to be a black-and-white, rigid notion that a thief's a thief,
and someone who steals things of low value that won't be missed is just
as likely to steal things of higher value that will be missed, and that
Baum's idea that that the Shaggy Man can be both a basically Good
Man, and yet also a liar and a petty thief, must be so much wishywashy
liberal mush. But Baum's view of Shaggy as a mixed character, with
small faults but larger virtues seems (however liberal) quite reasonably
plausible, and the rigid thief's-a-thief view seems unbalanced, both in
denying the possibility that someone like Shaggy might well have a code
of ethics that would forbid dog-napping, and in forgetting the risk he
would probably be running if he did steal the dog. (I'm discounting all
the more melodramatic possibilities that occur to me -- holding Toto for
ransom, killing him for food, killing him to make dead sure he doesn't
raise a pursuit -- as wildly out of character.) Shaggy can hardly want
Toto permanently as a pet or watchdog himself, as he'd have trouble
getting food for him. It's true that he tells Dorothy he took Toto along as
a watchdog, but this is obviously untrue -- he pocketed Toto because the
dog was getting in the way of his theft of the apples. He has no possible
reason to want Toto permanently. Conceivably (and ignoring his overall
Nice Guy character later in the story), he might want to steal Toto to sell
for a little money in a nearby town. But if he did that, there'd be a good
chance that the dog would be recognized, and he'd get himself into fairly
serious trouble. If he'd been caught with Bear's department-store-
diamond in his pocket, I might well think that "character" is outweighed
by that kind of evidence. But it was a dog, not an umpteen-caret
diamond, and, as I said before, it seems obvious that the only really likely
outcome (if magic hadn't got in the way before Shaggy got to the
crossroads) is that Shaggy intended to free the dog and let him run
home. Seems to me the only reasonable question here is not "Who
would steal a kid's dog?" but "Why didn't Dorothy challenge Shaggy's
obvious lie when she found Toto was along with them?" And I think the
narrative context answers that one: she was distracted by the sudden
and confusing unfamiliarity of the landscape.
Ruth Berman

Date: Wed, 06 Aug 1997 00:46:39 -0400
From: Tyler Jones <tnj at compuserve.com>
Subject: Oz
David:
Laumer speculated on Butterfield, and your theory is as good as any I've every heard.
There is a Butterfield, Missouri, but it's about 50 miles from the Kansas border.
--Tyler Jones

Date: Wed, 6 Aug 1997 08:54:22, -0500
From: NQAE93A at prodigy.com (MR ROBERT J COLLINGE)
Subject: Ozzy Digest, 08-05-97
"Road" thoughts for today:
Wasn't the tinman very inconsiderate and rude when he told Jack "your
last head was a stupid one."(pg167)
The tinman is suppose to have a very loving heart. This was out of
character for him.
In the Tinman's explanation of the Powder of Life to the Shaggy Man,
Dyna just sprinkled the powder on the blue bear. How come Tip/Ozma
had to use magic words and dance around?
Is there capitol punishment in Oz? The Tinman states on page163 that
"although if one is bad, he may be condemned and killed by the good
citizens."
Ruth Berman: Yes, I do worry when someone takes something that is
not theirs, puts it in their pockets, hides it from the owner, and
then lies to the owner about it. For whatever reason, it is still
called stealing. Shaggy did all of that. Even if to just get the
apples,(which I agreed he was NOT stealing) Shaggy dog-napped Toto,
even if he planned to return him. You yourself called Shaggy a liar.
You used the word "liberal" twice, insinuating that my views are
liberal? I am proud to be a conservative Republican. The notion
that anyone could condone Shaggy's actions sounds like "liberal mush"
to me, to use your own words. In Bear's store, Shaggy probably would
be arrested for shop lifting, which is exactly what he did throughout
the book. He put things in his pockets that did not belong to him.
You may call him innocent, I do not.
Have an Ozzy day!
Bob C.

Date: Wed, 06 Aug 1997 20:58:14 -0400
From: Richard Bauman <RBauman at compuserve.com>
Subject: Today's Oz Growls
We keep working the Shaggy/Toto/Apples problem. I think there is a good
reason. Some of us have read books past the BCF and have developed an
affection for Shaggy. Some of us are meeting him for the first time, or
have reached the stage of forgetfulness where they can't remember what he
was like in future books. Like me. Sigh! In any event there is nothing
wrong with liking someone and not approving of everything they do.
Here is a little test. You are in the drug store with a good friend and
you notice them pick something up and put it in their pocket. Giving them
the benefit of the doubt you wait until you have checked out and ask them
about it. They admit they stole it. What do you do? This actually
happened to me and I told them I wanted them to take it back. They tried
to give me a bunch of rationalizations but I wasn't having any. To make a
longer story short, they took it back. By the way, this was not a child.
I don't think it is part of friendship to excuse, accept or ignore bad
behavior. What do you think?
Sadly, Bear (:<)

Date: Thu, 07 Aug 1997 10:44:02 +0000
From: David Hulan <davidhulan at ntsource.com>
Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 08-06-97
Tyler:
I don't think Butterfield, Missouri, would have been the one Shaggy
didn't want to visit. Although the specific location of Uncle Henry's
farm isn't given, the few references indicate that it's probably not
very close to the Missouri line. Topeka is the only city referred to, so
it's probably the closest place of any size; if they were near the
Missouri line you'd expect a reference to Kansas City instead. (I can't
even find Butterfield, MO, in my road atlas; I'll have to see if I can
locate it - or other Butterfields near Kansas - on my "Street Atlas USA"
CD-ROM.)
Bob C.:
Actually, the Tin Woodman says that he has a kind heart, but not a
loving one. Still, telling Jack that his last head was a stupid one
isn't kind, either.
There is definitely capital punishment in Oz. Eureka is threatened with
it in _DotWiz_, and Glegg in _Kabumpo_ and Mombi in _Lost King_ are at
least apparently destroyed. There may be other cases that don't come to
mind offhand.
The incantation, etc., that Mombi and Tip had to use on the Powder of
Life in _Land_ was apparently only necessary for the first experimental
batch. By the second batch, which Dyna inherited, it was only necessary
to wish the object alive. And by the third (or possibly fourth - was
Bungle animated by the same batch as the bearskin, or a later one?)
batch, in _Patchwork Girl_, it required nothing but sprinkling.
Answering my own question above, I think Bungle must have been animated
by the same batch as the bearskin. It takes six years to make a batch,
and I don't believe that there could have been 18 years between _Land_
and _Patchwork Girl_. Even 12 years seems too much; 6 is about right.
Maybe the batch Pipt sold to Mombi was some years old, and he was
willing to give it up because he'd just finished a new batch with
improved action.
Technically speaking, if Shaggy planned to return Toto it wasn't
stealing, but wrongful appropriation. Or at least, that's a distinction
in the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which is the only criminal law
I've studied.
David Hulan

Date: Thu, 07 Aug 1997 14:06:43 -0500
From: Gordon Birrell <gbirrell at post.cis.smu.edu>
Subject: Ozzy Digest
About Shaggy's habit of pocketing things that don't belong to him: isn't
this to be expected (though not necessarily condoned) in a tramp who has no
means of sustenance? What I find interesting here is the fact that Baum
takes a figure on the very margins of society and makes him into the most
endearing character in the book. (Sorry, all you Polychrome fans!) A
valuable object lesson for his young readers. And Shaggy is endearing in
and of himself, not merely because of that infernal love magnet, which I
consider a truly sinister invention. Think what could happen if *that*
little implement were to fall into the wrong hands.
--Gordon Birrell

Date: Fri, 08 Aug 1997 10:02:54 -0600 (CST)
From: Ruth Berman <berma005 at maroon.tc.umn.edu>
Subject: ozzy digest
Bob Collinge: Hmm. You say you call it stealing "when someone takes
something that is not theirs." Well, yes, if that's the definition you're
using, it's defensible in terms of what's in the dictionary, and Shaggy
definitely stole Toto. But in that case you're worrying too much and
going into an inappropriate there-are-laws-against-that-sort-of-thing high
dudgeon against stealing. For stealing to be considered a serious crime,
it has to be defined more precisely. To quote "Webster's Collegiate," to
steal is "to take or appropriate without right or leave and with intent to
keep or make use of wrongfully." Without that intent to keep or make
use of wrongfully, it isn't the same thing. As I've argued previously,
Shaggy obviously intended to return the dog. The kind of "stealing"
involved in taking somewithing without right or leave but WITHOUT
INTENT TO KEEP OR MAKE USE OF WRONGFULLY is nothing more
than "borrowing without permission." Certainly, borrowing without
permission is a genuine problem to society, the more so when the object
borrowed without permission is valued by the owner, and when the
borrower tells a lie in trying to hide the fact that the point of borrowing
the item was to try to hide that the borrower had been genuinely trying to
steal something else, albeit something trivial (the apples). And certainly
it's appropriate to worry that Shaggy is a liar -- Baum obviously worries
about it, and dumps Shaggy in the Truth Pond before allowing him to
settle in Oz. But it is considerably out of balance to worry about stealing
in the sense of "borrowing without permission" as if it were the same
thing, either morally or legally, as "stealing" in the more precise sense.
They are not the same. Treating them as the same obscures the
difference between something important and something trivial.
Ruth Berman

Date: Fri, 08 Aug 1997 22:28:40 -0400
From: Richard Bauman <RBauman at compuserve.com>
Subject: Today's Oz Growls
Oh no, Ruth. You mean we have to read Shaggies mind and determine if he
really meant to steal something? I think the distinction you are trying to
draw is one that was put in for the benefit of criminals by the ACLU and
our perverted judiciary. The law should not be in the mind reading
business. People should be judged by their actions. You want me to wait,
after you have stolen a diamond from my store, to see if you really keep it
or make some other use of it. Well, not in my court. Sigh.
To quote you >"As I've argued previously, Shaggy obviously intended to
return the dog." I am really curious as to what makes this "obvious." It
is not at all obvious to me. Moving a little farther, this event
("borrowing without permission" if you insist) does not seem like the type
of lesson to be giving small children (and the rest of us).
This reminds me that some state (I forget which) passed a law that required
psychologists to wear a tall pointed hat, with stars and moons on it, when
testifying in court. I thought that was great!
Objectively, Bear (:<)

Date: Sat, 9 Aug 1997 08:28:42, -0500
From: NQAE93A at prodigy.com (MR ROBERT J COLLINGE)
Subject: Ozzy Digest
This will be my final response to the Shaggy/Toto ordeal.( I hope!)
Bear: I agree with you that how you feel about someone, in
friendship or in love, should never allow you to condone, accept, or
ignore someone's bad behavior. No one should ever overlook someone's
bad behavior just because they happen to like them.
Ruth: I must come to the conclusion that you and I will always
disagree on this subject. (and if we did not have disagreements, than
this digest would not be very interesting, would it?) I still do not
like Shaggy's behavior. Wether he was stealing, dog-napping, hiding,
or unlawfully taking Toto, he was still wrong. Even if he did not
have criminal intent, morally (now, I am speaking as a minister) he
was out of line. I do not recall it being very obvious that he was
going to return Toto. He did, however, serve the purpose of
getting Toto to Oz, for I fear Dorothy may have left him home if she
caught him barking at The Shaggy Man. So, we will continue to
disagree, but I thank you, kindly, for your response. It has been a
very good debate.
One more comment on the Shaggy Man: This same man who would not go
to Butterfield because someone owed him 15 cents, certainly changed
his attitude when he discovered the jewelry that Ozma left him in his
room.
On to Polychrome, who is the most endearing character to me in the book (sorry, Gordon).
Polychrome tells Dorothy she has no magical powers, but doesn't she
use some in a later book, maybe "Tinman"?
I may be mistaken.
Bob C.

Date: Sat, 09 Aug 1997 15:30:35 +0000
From: David Hulan <davidhulan at ntsource.com>
Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 08-08-97
Bill W.:
I did a little more checking on Butterfield. The one in Missouri appears
to be the largest one in the country, although it's a very small place.
Still, it has about a dozen streets. There's one in Arkansas about
halfway between Little Rock and Hot Springs that's also big enough to
have two or three streets. The remaining two, in Minnesota and Michigan,
are literally just "wide places in the road"; they just mark the
intersection of two (minor) roads, and are a long way from a city of any
size. Butterfield, MO, is down in the southwest corner of the state, and
is closer to either Arkansas or Oklahoma than to Kansas. And it's so
small that it's highly unlikely that any road from a point in Kansas
(even if Uncle Henry's farm is in the southeast corner of the state)
would be known as "the road to Butterfield". In fact, Butterfield isn't
even on or near a road that leads toward Kansas; the nearest road that
leads to another state is Missouri SR 37, and it goes south to Arkansas.
I think we can rule out any actual community of Butterfield as having
been in Baum's mind, unless it's one that hasn't survived to the
present.
Gordon:
I agree that Shaggy is the most endearing character in _Road_. Overall I
like Polychrome better, but her best appearances are in _Tik-Tok_ and
(especially) _Tin Woodman_; in _Road_ she doesn't do much but look
decorative.
David Hulan

Date: Sun, 10 Aug 1997 14:15:39 -0500
From: Gordon Birrell <gbirrell at post.cis.smu.edu>
Subject: Ozzy Digest
David:
I think your explanation of the origins of "the road to Butterfield" is
ingenious and convincing. FWIW, it turns out that there are a numer of
Butterfields around: in addition to the one in Missouri, there is a
Butterfield, Michigan, northwest of Grand Rapids; a Butterfield, Minnesota,
between the Twin Cities and Sioux Falls; a Butterfield, Oregon, on the coast
south of Astoria; and a Butterfield, Arkansas, near Hot Springs. In light
of the geographical confusion at the beginning of _Road_, it's amusing that
there are in fact so many roads to Butterfield.
--Gordon Birrell

Date: Mon, 11 Aug 1997 13:21:34 -0600 (CST)
From: Ruth Berman <berma005 at maroon.tc.umn.edu>
Subject: ozzy digest
Bear and Robert Collinge: Yes, the narrative makes it pretty clear what
Shaggy's intentions are. As I said before, it is clear that he has no desire
to keep Toto for himself, and it is clear that his character is such that he
would not kill the dog or hold him for ransom. He might possibly try to
sell him in the next town (although it's unlikely, in terms of his overall
character), but it's an unlikely outcome even without considering his
overall character, because of the danger that someone would spot the
dog as Dorothy's if he tried to sell him. There are really only four
possible outcomes: keep the dog, kill the dog, exchange the dog for
something of value, or let the dog go. The first three are unlikely, so it is
almost certainly the fourth. Possibly someone might want to quibble with
possibilities of letting the dog go but so far from home as to have trouble
finding the way back: that's a modified form of killing the dog, and
although it's a tad less unlikely than the other options (considering
Shaggy's general carelessness), it is still unlikely (considering his general
kindliness). If you want to argue that he really is that careless, I suppose
it's a possibility, but I don't think you'll get general agreement.
Robert Collinge: Discrepancy between having Polychrome say she
doesn't know magic in "Road" and being able to work small spells in "Tin
Man" -- possibly she thought those spells are so minor as not to count as
magic, or possibly in the interval she decided it would be a good idea to
learn a little magic. I recall seeing it suggested somewhere that she
might not be the same Polychrome, that perhaps all of the daughters of
the rainbow are named Polychrome, but this possibility (although
ingenious) doesn't strike me as likely.
Ruth Berman

Date: Mon, 11 Aug 1997 21:25:25 -0400 (EDT)
From: OZMA1024 at aol.com
Subject: Ozzy Digest
dave--would you please put this into the ozzy digest--
In one of baum's early oz books, "the road to oz", it talks about how the
crooked magician was dead, but in "the patchwork girl of oz" ojo the unlucky
and unk visit him and his wife. was this before he die, or did mr. baum make
a mistake?
-kate

Date: Wed, 13 Aug 1997 09:58:30 -0600 (CST)
From: Ruth Berman <berma005 at maroon.tc.umn.edu>
Subject: ozzy digest
Steve Teller: A while back you asked why the limp blue bearskin should
be voiceless when the equally airless (however rigid) Jack Pumpkinhead
and such like Powder-of-Life beings can talk. A thought occurred to me
-- maybe the bearskin can talk, but doesn't care to, and the people
around were just guessing at a cause in thinking that it couldn't talk?
Kate: The question of the Crooked Magician's "death" has been
discussed in an article in the "Baum Bugle" ("The Enigma of Dr. Pipt")
some years back and in various Oz Digs comments some months back.
There are two main theories: that there were two Crooked Magicians
(Drs. Pipt and Nikidik), or that the reports of his death were exaggerated
(and he perhaps changed his name or perhaps was in full named Nikidik
Pipt).
Ruth Berman

Date: Thu, 21 Aug 1997 16:35:52 +0000
From: David Hulan <davidhulan at ntsource.com>
Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 08-10-97 That
Bob C.:
If you recall, Shaggy's statement that he didn't want to go to
Butterfield because a man there owed him 15 cents was a lie; he
confessed, after bathing in the Truth Pond, that he wanted to avoid the
place because the woman he'd stolen the Love Magnet from lived there.
There's no question that his morals were quite lax at the beginning of
the book. But he redeemed himself later, and as a minister you should
presumably also put a high value on honest repentance and reformation,
right?
Gordon:
Butterfield, OR, doesn't even show up on my Street Atlas USA CD-ROM (or
at least, not when I search for Butterfields). The others you mention
all turn up, but only the ones in Missouri and Arkansas seem to have
even a small community associated with them.
David Hulan

Date: Mon, 25 Aug 1997 19:45:34 -0400 (EDT)
From: CrNoble at aol.com
Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 08-24-97
I won't bore you with all my observations/comments about RTO other than to
remark that I'm surprised that nobody mentioned JRN's dig at WWD in the
picture at the beginning of the chapter when Dorothy and co. finally arrive
at the Tin Woodman's palace. Perhaps that's old hat to many of you, but I
*always* get a kick out of it.
Craig

Date: Sun, 11 Oct 1998 09:49:18 -0400
From: "J. L. Bell" <JnoLBell at compuserve.com>
Subject: Shaggy Men outside Oz
Finally, folks interested in the Shaggy Man might be intrigued by what
historians are now saying about the figure of the hobo in
turn-of-the-century culture. Shaggy's most obvious literary predecessor is
James Whitcomb Riley's "Raggedy Man," as Dan Mannix and others have pointed
out. But such tramps seem to have had a particular political meaning in
Baum's time and place as well.
The following paragraphs come from "Where's the Romance of the Open
Road?" by Nina Bernstein, NEW YORK TIMES, 10 Oct 1998, p. A15. Kusmer is a
historian at Temple, author of DOWN AND OUT, ON THE ROAD: TRAMPS AND
VAGRANTS IN AMERICAN SOCIETY, 1865-1940 (Oxford University Press, 1999).
DePastino is a "young social and cultural historian"--i.e., that modern
form of hobo, the untenured academic.
In the mid-1890s, in the depths of the Gilded Age
depression, the "Industrial Armies of the Unemployed"
began recruiting homeless men from Western skid
row neighborhoods for a cross-country "petition in
boots" to demand a program of public works from
lawmakers in Washington. Dozens of copycat marches
were organized from Chicago, San Francisco, and the
Pacific Northwest during this period of widening
inequality and brutal strike-breaking. Hobo armies
hijacked freight trains, often with the help of
railroad workers sympathetic to their cause. By 1908,
the Industrial Workers of the World, known as the
Wobblies, had cast hobos as a muscular advance guard
of the American class struggle. . . .
Mr. Kusmer traces the rise of a more sympathetic
image of homelessness in the early 20th century to the
growing acceptance of rootless underemployment as a
feature of the capitalist industrial economy rather than
as a sign of bad character or social decay. Most jobs
were temporary or seasonal, and with European immigrants
flooding the labor market, even full-time year-round
work was usually too low-paid to cushion families against
illness, industrial accidents and the business cycles of
the pre-welfare era. By the same token, the Ford Motor
Company's factories, which paid the best industrial wages,
experienced 100 percent turnover on the assembly line in
1905 as workers quit to drift on to something else. In this
context, Mr. DePastino argues, the hobo came to represent
a kind of manly embrace of insecurity and a last-ditch
rebellion against the discipline of the factory floor.
Shaggy's refusal to participate in the monetary system may reflect this
romanticized view of the hobo, even if Baum didn't subscribe to all the
Wobbly agenda.
J. L. Bell JnoLBell at compuserve.com